A picture is worth a thousand clips...

We are currently planning some major overhauls for our site, we are going to be updating as many pictures as possible. Our main goal for this next week is taking all new photos of our Christmas Light Clips. We have images of most all our clips, but not enough images! We want (and our customers want) more pictures of light clips in use, we want examples, we want hi-res detailed images, which results in bandwidth eating mass hysteria.

This also means more movie clips, we have videos of our Musical Christmas Controller and our Panoramic Motion Projector (Click here to visit my youtube page, I do have some guitar and puppy related videos too, but don't worry about those). We want to give you as much information as anyone could possibly want, and in the next couple months we hope to do that.

Making Custom Inline Female Plugs

We get a ton of questions asking, "How in the world do you make your own custom power strips for your lights?" Well, we have a tutorial on www.aachristmas.com (Click Here) but to help out the rest of the internet community we've decided to share our handy tip.

Making Custom Female Plugs:

Get your tools, we use pruning shears, a shop knife, and a multi tool




Using the shears cut 2 times on the inside of the plug. You cut on the side that doesn't have the opening for the wire.




Try to replicate the opposite sides spacing and length (these cuts are a little long but will work)




Grab the area in between your cuts and lift up, you can then cut this out or just twist and break the plastic.




You can go ahead and us the plug like this if you want, we usually will take the knife and clean up the edges.




CAREFULLY cut away the excess plastic to get a smooth edge. This step is optional if you have enough room for the wire.




You can now place the plug were you need it on the wire.




Slide on the back




Enjoy your custom Quick Connect Plug.



Please be careful when doing this, these tools are sharp and we assume NO RESPONSIBILITY if you lop a finger off or cut yourself. I hope these images and steps helps everyone trying to make custom inline plugs for their Christmas lighting projects.

--
Zach Broyles
All American Christmas Co.

Mini light spacings are...WRONG!

We get lots of responses to our miniature Christmas light strings stating that they spacings are, "Wrong, all these light spacings are wrong!". Well, I have your answer! Mini Light bulbs are not exactly spaced at the intervals at which say, they wire however is cut to the spacings.

So let's say we have a 4-inch spaced set, now some of our manufacturers cut the wire to make the bulbs and socket be around 4 inches, but some companies cut the wire at 4 inches...then insert the wire into the socket which shortens the space between the bulbs.

We are in process of phasing out our spacing category names because the confusion, but will all miniature Christmas lights, be it 2.5 Inch spaced, 4 inch, 6 inch, or 8 inch you have to realize the spacings may not be exactly what the manufacturers say it is.


Check out our Mini Light page.
--
Zach Broyles
All American Christmas Co.

Fitter, Happier, More Productive...

We are currently in the process of making the website a simplier, better looking, and most importantly faster online shopping experience. The online Christmas Light competition has grown by leaps and bounds and since we began as one of the very first online Christmas Lighting suppliers. We believe we owe it to the online shopping community to keep our service and our web site head and shoulders above the others. AAChristmas.com is one of the easiest to use online stores around. We pride ourselves in how simple it is to find whatever it is you are looking for. Mini lights, LED lights, Spools of wire, or bulbs are usually less than 4 clicks away. So within seconds (if you have high speed internet that is) you can be buying exactly what you need.


We are also in the process of adding even more information to our vast selection of Christmas lighting products! Hopefully this means less questions, which in turn means happier customers. Please visit us, bookmark us, and check back for all the great updates we are doing to our site.

--
Zach Broyles
All American Christmas Co.

Why do LED Christmas lights matter?

Seems like every day we get a phone call with questions about why LED Christmas are so expensive and what all the hype is about. Light Emitting Diodes (LED) are expensive, if you go to radio shack to pickup the same type of LED's that are used inside our lights you're going to spend anywhere from 75 cents to 2 dollars on a single bulb. Granted, when manufacturers use them they aren't paying that much a bulb, but it just shows how much the technology costs inside these sophisticated lights. LEDs have different costs depending on the color of the bulb itself, unlike traditional filament style Christmas bulbs that all light up a white/yellow color, LED bulbs light up a specific color. So when you see a LED light string that is blue, the LEDs inside the plastic bulb casing is actually lighting up blue. The result is a pure color, whites are white, blues are blue, and so on. Also unlike a traditional Christmas light string, LEDs generally require some sort of device to change the power so that it will work with the lights. This means there is either a small circuit board wired to, or separate from, the string which also makes them more expensive up front.


Now, even though the costs of these lights can be anywhere from 2 to 10 times the costs of traditional lights the benefits definitely outweigh the initial expense. Part of the hype surrounding LEDs in general is their amazing life span, some commercial mini lights can have a life up to 3,000 hours. Compare that to the amazing 200,000 hours life span that LED lights have! I've already mentioned the amazing pure colors that LEDs have, but another great reason to step up to Christmas LED Lights is the fact that their hard plastic shells wont break from regular use. We all know that traditional Christmas light bulbs, even the classic mini light bulbs are subject to breaking, but with LED light strings you won't have to worry about that anymore. The last and best reason to make the move to LED lights, is the fact that they don't use nearly as much precious electricity as traditional Christmas light bulbs. Your standard C7 bulbs uses 5 watts of energy, compare that to a screw in replacement LED C7 bulb which uses and amazing .96 watts! That's .96...less than 1 whole watt. Other LED strings can be just as a amazing, take for example our Commercial 25 Light LED sets only draw 1.8 watts, 25 bulbs....1.8 watts! This allows for more connectability and less of a headache when that electric bill comes in the first of January.

Please visit our LED page and check out our wide selection of LED lights we have for sale. I hope that you can see the great benefits of making the switch.